3:3 Laccolith

When and Where I Found it:  Oh!  I am so excited right now.   (And laughing at how excited I am.)  I found this word originally in our Ruddell and Shearer (2002) article.  It was one of the many words on the middle school students' word list.   I just found it again this morning in a number of places while surfing on-line.     I first found it on the free Merriam-Webster Dictionary site.  What I learned there led me to ask the question... is Devil's Tower a laccolith?   And so I went to the National Parks site and was excited at what I found.  

What it means: a mass of igneous rock that is intruded between sedimentary beds and produces a domical bulging of the overlying strata  
Laccolith. (n.d.) In Merriman-Webster online.  Retrieved from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/laccolith




Level of Familiarity:  When I saw the word listed in the article, I truly had no idea what the word meant.    I thought maybe it could be a noun, but I thought maybe it describes some sort of ancient writing system.   I never even thought that the word was connected with geology or places I have been.

Do I Want to Know This Word Well and Why?   Yes.  I  find geologic phenomena fascinating.   Earthquakes, volcanos, natural hot springs, mud craters, and the like -- ever since I was a kid I have always found these types of phenomena truly amazing.     Also, I have traveled across the county a number of times and South Dakota and Wyoming are some of my favorite places to explore, particularly because of the incredible geologic and geographic diversity.   Devil's Tower, for example, is a place I would never miss visiting because I think it is such an incredible sight to behold.      I was so interested to find out that the scientists cannot even agree as to whether or not it is a laccolith.   It just adds yet another layer of mystery and mysticalness to this special place. 


Do I Think Others Should Know This Word Well...if so WHO and WHY?:  Since we talked about it in class, I think it would be good for LTED 625 students to at least take a few moments to recognize that this was a word we all said we didn't know and that we had no idea how best to determine what it meant without doing further exploration.      In terms of a larger group of learners, I would certainly hope that people in the field of geology know this term.